Hi, peeps. I'm writing a DOS batch file, to run under windows 98. Generally, I need the commands to use long filenames, but it doesn't always work. For instance, when using Xcopy from the command line, if I want to preserve the long filename, I have to use Xcopy32, instead. However, as far as I know, this is the only command for which there is a long filename version. The command I'm having trouble with now, is FC (File compare). When making diskette copies of things, I like to compare my copies. FC isn't flexible enough to use wildcards, or to compare all the files in one directory with the like named files in another directory, so I once wrote Compmult, a Quickbasic program which grabs all the filenames in the directory, and then sequentially compares each one with the same file in a target directory. Unfortunately, it's a 16 bit program, so it doesn't work well on a system that uses long filenames. For instance, if I have a file named 'This is a long filename.dat', Compmult will retrieve the short file name, which might be Thisis~1.dat. Unfortunately, it will then try to compare that to the same short file name in the target directory, but, *that identical* file might have a *different* short filename like Thisis~2.dat, instead. So, it doesn't work. So, I tried to do this using a batch file, with logic like the following: for %%f in (*.*) do if exist %1%%f fc /b %%f %1%%f, where %1 is where I'm passing 'a:', to make the program compare the current files to the files on a: Well, I've tried various versions of this, too, like adding quotes: for %%f in (*.*) do if exist %1%%f fc /b "%%f" %1"%%f Anyway, I can't seem to get it to work. Then, suddenly, something in my memory tells me I once heard of a DOS switch, like 'Set LFN=1', or something, which will force DOS to work with long filenames, instead of short ones. Does anyone know about this switch? I just searched the DOS help file on my Win98 CD, and no mention is made of it. Someday, I need to get a book about undocumented DOS. Thanks in advance. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sites.netscape.net/baldwinwh/DOSPgms/DOSPgms.html {:^>) To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
